00:00

[SOUND EFFECT]

 

Terrance McKnight: This is the Open Ears Project.

 

Rowan Williams: Curiously, the first time I heard it was in a transcription for the lute. 

 

A friend of mine, when we were graduate students together, had this recording of transcriptions of various Bach pieces for the lute and I remember we used to listen to them a lot after dinner in the evenings in college and one evening in particular, I recall him saying to me as the record finished, “So what's the music we would most like to spend the rest of our lives listening to?” 

 

And certainly I've spent the last 45 years going back again and again to these cello suites.

 

[MUSIC PLAYING: Prelude from JS Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major]

 

I'm Rowan Williams, I was the master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and for 10 years I was Archbishop of Canterbury. We're listening to the first movement of Bach's Cello Suite No 1.

 

I think the first time I heard the Bach Cello suites, it felt like… not happiness, but joy. 

 

Joy is the recognition that this is how the world is and you're invited to be there. 

 

I think that's what people long for and are grateful for in all great art. 

 

2:11

Bach over all means a huge amount to me and, of course, he's one of the great geniuses of sacred music - and the Matthew Passion is, for me, one of the, the all time supreme works of human imagination. 

 

But there's something about some of Bach's instrumental music which, dare I say, takes you even further into what I'd call a contemplative understanding. 

 

With the Passion or with the Christmas Oratorio, you've got the words to guide you. You’re sort of nudged about what you might be feeling, and Bach does that very well. He, he makes you feel foreboding and grief and exhilaration and resignation,

 

But what's he making you feel with the instrumental music, especially something as pure and single as the cello suite - what happens is that you're made to feel connected.

 

The sheer resonance of it, you're in harmony, and to me that is one of the things that happens in religious contemplation.

 

 You’re just open. You’re just resonating.

 

Of course, it's a mystery how exactly this, this works. 

 

[MUSIC PLAYING: Allemande from JS Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major]

 

It seems to me that the discipline of truly listening to music, just letting nothing go on in your mind except that – that sound, is something that helps to train us for other kinds of listening. 

 

And I know that to listen carefully does mean stopping doing some things.

 

I remember one evening where I had actually put on the Bach Cello suites. Not having anything else to do, I thought: “I – I could do that letter tonight. I could finish off that bit of correspondence from the day,”

 

And having quite a struggle with myself to say: “No, just sit down for God's sake. Just sit down and listen, the letter will look after itself, but this is, this is important.”

 

5:00

Listening is fundamental to prayer. We sometimes think of prayer as talking to God, and in a sense that's true, but then it's important to listen to what we're saying to God. Prayer is an opportunity to interpret your desires in the presence of God. What do I want? Let's get it out there, let's look at it. Let’s allow the light of divine presence to shine on that. 

 

There've been times when I've said to God, “Look just for once, couldn't you possibly break the habit of a lifetime and tell me what I ought to do?”

 

But it's, it's… a-a, a subtler business than that.

 

It's a big question, this issue of doubt and certainty in faith. Certainly, there - there have been times in my, my-my life as a Christian where I just haven't been able to see how it all hangs together. 

 

And that's where the, the daily discipline of silence and just going back to staring at the white walls, so to speak, in a rather other Zen-ish way.

 

But to me, music connects a lot with that. It's the unpeeling or unrolling of that tight little ball inside that's my ego — my worried, frantic, guilty, ambitious ego. And as if someone's fingers very gently open it out, lay it flat and say: “It's all right, just-just be there and-and receive what's-what's being given.”

 

And certain works, particularly Bach, simply anchor me in that afresh, again and again and again.

 

7:18

It strikes me, always, how very simple this is. So much of this is just great spread chords, like the fingers being gently splayed across space. And yet as those chords evolve, they move into different, different areas of feeling. They loosen, they tighten at some points in this they…. they come very, very tight. They're coiled up. Tension mounts a little bit, then it's released.

 

And it's not that that is making you feel happy, sad, or whatever, but there's a rhythm through which you move into that final stillness and settlement, and grace. 

 

[OPEN EARS THEME MUSIC: Philip Glass’s Piano Etude No. 2]

 

Terrance McKnight: Rowan Williams on the Bach Cello Suites. We’ve got the Prelude from the first cello suite coming right up. Stay with us.

 

[MUSIC PLAYING: Prelude from JS Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major]

 

11:30

[OPEN EARS THEME MUSIC: Philip Glass’s Piano Etude No. 2]

 

Terrance McKnight: This is The Open Ears Project. Next week we’ve got author Jennifer Egan. She’s got some piano music from Chopin to share with us. 

 

Jennifer Egan: I think it is a piece that seems to be telling a story. I think there's the rhythm and the music of language that should be working in any piece of fiction or any sort of narrative. I mean, this is exactly what I’m trying to do when I write fiction.

 

Terrance McKnight: The Open Ears project was conceived and created by Clemency Burton Hill. I’m Terrance McKnight and I'm so pleased to present season two of this podcast to you.

 

If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating and a review on your favorite podcast platform and, if you’ve got a story about a piece of classical music, we want to know. Email us at openears@wqxr.org. You can also head to our website, wqxr.org, to check out our other podcasts about classical music and playlists for this and past seasons.

 

Season two of The Open Ears Project was produced by Clemency Burton-Hill and Rosa Gollan. Our technical director is Sapir Rosenblatt, and our project manager is Natalia Ramirez. Elizabeth Nonemaker is the executive producer of podcasts at WQXR, and Ed Yim is our chief content officer. I’m Terrance McKnight. Thanks so much for listening.

 

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